We always stopped at a Dunkin Donuts. If we started a little late it’d be a Dunkin Donuts half way there, about an hour out, half hour at the least. Or sometimes it’d be at the edge of town, right before we hit the highway.

Dad knew where all the Dunkins were. Nobody had breakfast sandwiches or drivethroughs back then. You had to go inside. He’d get a medium coffee, two sugars, two creams, and I’d get a chocolate milk and a bavarian creme, the first bite and it oozed out and into your mouth.

And then off we’d go, listening to the radio or singing songs. Didn’t matter the weather, every Saturday morning we’d go, always sure to be out of the house by seven, no later.

West and north we’d get to the bridges. There were parking areas and we’d get out and walk around. Dad would stay close to the rails, look over. “How far down do you think that is, son?”

I was too small, I couldn’t see.

“Be a long drop from here.”

East we’d get to L.L. Bean. It was totally different back then. Only locals and hunters knew of it. How my dad knew I’ll never know.

You could talk to guides, men who knew the lakes and rivers and mountains. Dad listened to their stories, about going so far out in the woods it seemed there was no coming back, then he’d check his watch.

“Come on, son. Time to be getting back.”

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I attended a small con in November 2019 and had a chance to read some of my flash pieces to a group of fellow writers.

I told them prior to the reading, “This will be your chance to tell a fellow author, ‘My god, that sucks!’ and get away with it because I really want to know if I have any skill or if I’m fooling myself.”

By the way, this work was recently rejected by a magazine. I give their reason after the narration.

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This is the fifth in an ongoing series of StoryCrafting/StoryTelling posts I’m publishing for my own benefit; explaining something helps me determine if I’ve truly learned it or am simply parroting what others have offered. I learn my weak spots, what I need to study, et cetera.

This is a powerful phrase to me because it is simple, elegant, and oh so true. The individual who stands mute and unmoving in a situation is responding to that situation. That response is a communication. Doesn’t matter what they’re doing, or I should offer “regardless of what they’re doing,” they are communicating their response to that situation.

It’s not that a person is moving, it’s how they move. It’s not that a person is doing something, it’s how they’re doing it. Watch people the next time you’re in a mall or grocery store. How are the people dressed? Did they just throw something on or did they take time to present themselves a certain way? Imagine them grooming; do they take their time? Do they take their time to look unimpressive? Do they slap things on and look impressive? What does all that reveal about their character?Continue reading “Character is… (Part 2.3) – Action is…”

This is the fourth in an ongoing series of StoryCrafting/StoryTelling posts I’m publishing for my own benefit; explaining something helps me determine if I’ve truly learned it or am simply parroting what others have offered. I learn my weak spots, what I need to study, et cetera.

Description – Second most economical, second least effective. If you must provide a list of details, make the last one explosive, eye-catching, something highly contrasting with the previous, preferably bland, descriptive details.

Imagine you’re going to cook a specific dish for some reason. I’ll choose Fettuccine Alfredo because I made it for Susan last night.

Start with a list of ingredients:

light cream

milk

butter

flour

parmesan

ground pepper

salt

red pepper

chicken

garlic

heavy cream

ricotta

romano

asiago

Good and not enough. If I dumped them all into a pot it wouldn’t be very good Fettuccine Alfredo. You can have all the ingredients but you have to put them together correctly to get the desired outcome.

I don’t care where you are in your writing career, Rita Mae Brown’s Starting from Scratch will give you a chuckle (several hundred, probably) and clarify things that were not only muddy, but had been pushed aside because they were just too damn hard to figure out.

Worry no more, Rita’s got you covered.

I didn’t know who Rita Mae Brown was until a friend suggested I give her a read. This was back in the early-mid 1980s. He thought she was brilliant and hilarious.

That didn’t tempt me.

Then he told me she could benchpress 225#.

Yes, I was that much of an assh?le (may still be) that that caught my interest.

But I didn’t pick up one of her books (that I remember) until my first go-round as a writer. That book being Starting from Scratch.

Reading the book recently, it’s obvious I had read it at least once before; there were highlights in it. There were highlights of concepts I remember, if not exact phrasings. Truth be told, I was probably unprepared for the book when I first read it (my copy was published in Feb 1988). I’m glad I kept it around.

Starting from Scratch is a mechanic’s manual of the English language. Brown explains the purpose of first v third person POV with duh! level examples and lots of them. Ditto subjunctive case (trust me, you need to read this section). Ditto strong v weak verbs (another must read). Imagine someone showing you a crescent wrench and a 9/16″ box-end, showing you they can do the same thing, then demonstrating why one works better on these types of nuts, the other works better on those types of nuts.

Her Exercises chapter…remember what I wrote above about being impressed by her bench? Here’s your cardio and resistance training in one incredible package.

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TWIT TWAT TWOT

Man and Boy; Tennessee, 1932 (Revised for a 3 minute #Fiction Slam) I first wrote Man and Boy sometime in the early 1990s, possibly late 1980s. I remember reading publicly and the next reader, a published author, making a derogatory comment about the https://josephcarrabis.com/2020/01/20/man-and-boy-tennessee-1932-revised-for-a-3-minute-fiction-slam/ #mood

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I read this book because I worked in parallel fields for many years and also for research into some current writing projects. Anatomy of Motive is a good read, informative without going into horrific detail. A good source book.

1) I vacillated between a 1 or 2 star rating for Every Love Story is a Ghost Story.
2) I read this side by side with Jonathan Eig’s "Ali: a life" (a better book if you’re into biographies, my opinion).
3) I opted to read Every Love Story…

I’ll start by noting that Ali has been one of my heros for much of my adult life. Sometimes it’s good to learn some of our heros’ histories, other times not.
As biographies go, this was better than most I’ve read and seemed synoptic with…

(I had to enter this book so apologize now for errors. I was surprised Goodreads didn’t have it).
This was the first recognizable "Man v Machine" book I read. I probably read others before this but this one came to me when I was working …

This is an interesting book that (in my opinion) doesn’t go far enough. Yes, some may claim there’s a problem and Klein does a dynamite job detailing what that problem is.
Where are the actionable solutions? Where are step by step plans…